Chapter 5: The Cliffside Scramble
The wind on the ledge was a living thing. It snatched at Milly’s hair, whipped her damp shirt against her skin, and tried to argue with gravity itself. Below, the sea was a dazzling, indifferent blue, smashing itself to white foam against the base of the cliff a dizzying drop away.
After the close, damp darkness of the mountain’s guts, the sheer, open violence of the light and air was overwhelming. Milly squinted, her eyes watering.
Y/n didn’t hesitate. She moved to the edge, peered over, and then began descending with a grim, practiced economy. She found holds Milly couldn’t even see—a faint ripple in the rock, a stubborn root clinging from a crack—and shifted her weight with a fluid confidence that seemed to defy the thousand-foot drop. The wound on her side was a dark, wet stain, but it didn’t slow her.
“Your turn,” Y/n called up, her voice almost lost in the wind. “Go slow. Test every hold. Your weight is nothing to these rocks. They won’t care if they let go.”
“Comforting!” Milly shouted back. She turned, facing the rock, her fingers searching for the first ledge Y/n had used. The limestone was rough, biting into her palms, but it was also slick in patches with evaporated sea spray. She started down.
It was a torture of focus. Every muscle in her arms and legs burned with the effort of controlled panic. The world shrunk to the next handhold, the next six inches of descent. She could hear Y/n below her, the soft scuff of her boots, the occasional dislodged pebble clattering down the face.
“You’re doing well,” Y/n said, closer now.
“I feel like a slug on a windowpane.”
“A very determined slug.”
Milly’s foot found a promising-looking lip of rock. She put her weight on it. For a second, it held. Then, with a dry, crumbling sound, it sheared away.
The world tilted. A scream choked in her throat. Her grip on the rock above slipped, fingers scrabbling.
Then a vise locked around her middle.
Y/n had braced herself on a wider outcrop, one arm hooked around a stony protrusion, the other snatching Milly out of the air. She pulled her in, hard, until Milly’s back was flush against her chest. They stood there, perched on the precipice, lashed by the wind. Milly’s heart was a frantic bird trying to break her ribs. Y/n’s arm was an iron band across her stomach, holding her firmly against the solid, unyielding strength of her body.
Milly could feel every contour of her—the hard plane of her abdomen, the powerful line of her thighs, the rapid, steady beat of her heart against her shoulder blade. The scent of ozone and earth was overwhelming this close.
“I’ve got you,” Y-n murmured, her voice a low vibration against Milly’s ear. “You’re secure.”
For a long, suspended moment, neither moved. The fear of the fall melted, replaced by a different, warmer kind of terror. Milly was acutely aware of her own breathing, of the way her body fit against Y/n’s. It felt less like a rescue and more like a claim.
Then Y/n’s grip loosened, just enough to turn Milly around. They were face-to-face now, on a ledge barely wide enough for one. Y/n’s hands came up to steady her by the shoulders. Her green eyes were molten in the daylight, searching Milly’s face with an intensity that had nothing to do with the cliff.
“You are alright?” Y/n asked, the formality of the words a stark contrast to the intimacy of their position.
Milly just nodded, her voice gone. A fine tremor ran through her, part adrenaline, part something else entirely.
Y/n’s gaze dropped to Milly’s mouth for a fraction of a second before she looked away, out to sea. Her jaw tightened. “The hold is stable here. We rest for a moment.”
She didn’t let go of Milly’s shoulders.
Milly found her voice, though it came out rough. “Thanks. Again.”
“I did not bring you out of the dark to lose you to the light.” Y/n said it simply, as if stating a fact of the world. The sun is hot, the sea is salty, I will not let you fall.
They stood in silence, the wind trying to pluck them from the rock. The heat of Y/n’s hands seeped through Milly’s shirt. The shadescar on Y/n’s side was inches from Milly’s face, a brutal reminder of what lay behind them.
“Does it hurt less?” Milly asked quietly.
“It is a persistent cold. A reminder.” Y/n finally released her shoulders, turning slightly to survey the rest of the descent. “We are two-thirds down. The rest is easier. A slope, then a goat path to the beach.”
“A goat path. Great. My favorite.”
The rest of the climb passed in a blur of focused movement and unspoken static. Y/n was right; the lower section was less vertical, more of a treacherous scramble down crumbling scree. Finally, their boots hit flat, stony ground—a narrow crescent of beach hemmed in by towering cliffs.
The relief was a physical ache. Milly stumbled a few paces from the base of the cliff and sank onto a smooth, sun-warmed boulder, her legs jelly. She tipped her head back, letting the sun bake her face.
Y/n remained standing, her posture still alert, but some of the tension had left her shoulders. She scanned the cliffs, the sea, the single narrow exit from the beach—a split in the rock that likely led inland.
“We should keep moving,” Y/n said, but there was no urgency in it. She walked to the water’s edge, crouched, and cupped seawater in her hands, splashing it over her face and the back of her neck.
Milly watched her. The divine warrior, washing away Underworld grit with Aegean saltwater. The normalcy of the gesture was jarring. “So what’s the plan, boss? Find a village? Call for a chopper?”
Y/n stood, wiping her hands on her thighs. “The nearest mortal settlement is twenty kilometers east. The path will take us there.” She paused. “You will need a story. For the dirt. The…” She gestured vaguely at Milly’s general state of dishevelment.
“Fell down a hill. Got lost. Standard tourist stuff.” Milly pushed herself up, her muscles protesting. She walked over to Y/n, stopping beside her. The sea breeze was cleaner here, but it still carried a faint, acrid undertone. “That smell. Sulfur. It’s still here.”
Y/n nodded, her expression grim. “The wound in the mountain is still open. The boundaries are thin. This area… it will feel wrong. Animals will avoid it. People will get headaches, have bad dreams if they camp too close.” She looked at Milly. “You feel it?”
Milly thought about it. Not a headache, but a low hum in her bones, a subliminal wrongness, like hearing a single note of a familiar song played out of tune. “Yeah. I feel it.”
“Good. That means your senses are still your own.” Y/n turned to face her fully. “Milly. When we reach the village… you should get on a bus. Go to Athens. Fly home.”
The words hung between them, blunt and heavy.
“Is that an order?” Milly asked, her voice deceptively light.
“It is a desperately hopeful suggestion.”
“After all that? The cave, the shades, the cliff?” Milly took a step closer. “You think I’m just going to go back to reading about this stuff in textbooks? You think I can?”
Y/n’s eyes flashed. “I think you are mortal. I think that thing in the mountain, the one that shook the world when we left, was not a shade. It was older. And it is stirring because of you. Because a living soul walked where it shouldn’t. Your curiosity is a beacon. Your life is a disturbance.” Her voice dropped, fraying at the edges. “I can fight shades. I cannot fight the bedrock of Tartarus if it wakes up.”
Milly didn’t back down. “You told me you couldn’t hold the line forever. Back in the cavern. I didn’t run then. I’m not running now.” She reached out, her fingers brushing the back of Y/n’s hand where it hung at her side. The contact was electric. “You’re hurt. You’re tired. And you’re alone in a way I don’t think you even understand. Let me help.”
Y-n stared at their almost-joined hands. A conflict raged behind her eyes, a war between the instinct to protect and the aching, lonely want for an ally. For this ally.
“It is not your war,” Y/n whispered.
“You made it my war when you didn’t let me become a ghostly smear on a cave wall.” Milly’s hand turned, her fingers threading tentatively through Y/n’s. The grip was strong, calloused, and it held on. “So. Village first. Then we figure out how to plug your leaky mountain.”
Y/n was silent for a long time. Then, her fingers tightened around Milly’s. A decision. A surrender.
“Souvlaki first,” Y/n said, the ghost of a smile touching her lips. “Then the impossible.”
She didn’t let go of her hand as they started toward the split in the rock, leaving the sulfur-tainted beach and the humming darkness of the mountain behind. For now.